Christine Brandes changed her mind on the way to her Noe Valley
Chamber Music concert Sunday. What had originally been billed as a
complicated affair involving several players became, instead, a
recital of French and German songs beautifully programmed and
performed by Brandes and pianist Laura Dahl.

The original centerpiece of the concert remained intact: a performance
of five songs from Hindemith's Das Marienleben (The
life of Mary), a setting of poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke. The songs
follow Mary from her birth, through the Annunciation, to the birth and
later the death of Christ, and finally to Mary's death. Brandes
spoke briefly about Rilke's gift for humanizing Mary and even the
angels, and expressed her admiration for Hindemith's original
settings, subsequently spoiled by his fussing with them. She sang the
originals.

The "Annunciation" was particularly effective, as Mary and the angel
gazed at each other before the angel began his announcement. Brandes'
singing was elegant, and her occasional use of gesture is telling. In
the "Pieta" upon Christ's death, Mary is miserable and numb; the
performance, a bit overwrought, would benefit from more use of quiet,
vibrato-free, desolate sound. Mary's death, on the other hand,
appropriately sounded a note of triumph and transfiguration.

A lovely palette

Reynaldo Hahn, like his contemporary Claude Debussy, was attracted to
15th century French poetry. The recital opened with five of his
settings in this genre, three of them rondels with their graceful
repetition of lines. Brandes sang to Chloris, the perennial
shepherdess, and to the nightingale among the lilacs, and to a
beautiful and noble lady, shading her voice to suit each. Her voice
has become increasingly resonant and colorful. When she lost her
heart to a lady in a pavilion, and when she rhapsodized about laughing
Spring, the sound was bright. When she sang "Je me souviens,"
remembering the passionate beginnings of love and longing for its
return, her sound was nuanced, with rich low tones.

Debussy's Ariettes oubliées, to poems by Paul
Verlaine, rounded out the first half of the recital. The languorous
ecstasy of the first song was beautifully shaped, with just the right
variations of tempo and dynamics. "Il pleure dans mon coeur" (The
weeping in my heart is like the rain outside), that gorgeous
description of ennui, sometimes got a little too heated; Debussy's
dynamic markings range from piano to pianissimo. Even the little
recitative outburst toward the end is marked pianissimo, and it needs
to be draggy rather than emphatic. Brandes sharped a little there,
but that may have been because she was bothered by a high buzzing
sound in the room. She stopped and waited for some experimenting with
lights to eliminate the sound, but it was hard to locate.

She continued with the lamenting "L'ombre des arbres" (Tree-shadows), then
launched into the merry-go-round song, "Chevaux de bois" (wooden
horses), enlivened by effective gestures and nicely paced as the
day winds down and the stars come out. "Green" followed  one of
Debussy's most erotic songs  and Brandes gave it a lovely
performance, using rubato and tempo changes tellingly. It could have
used even more inégalité in the words. And the set
ended with the troubling "Spleen": all nature is too vivid; I'm tired
of everything  except for you. Alas!

Words without music

This concert was one of several described in the season brochure as
intended to be interactive, and Brandes and her excellent accompanist
took turns speaking informally to the audience. When applause started
after the first song, Brandes, with great good humor, suggested that
the concert would get awfully long unless people held their applause
until the end of each set. She also encouraged people to follow the
printed texts closely if they felt like it; she wouldn't mind if their
eyes were given to excellent poetry as she sang. Introducing the
Debussy, Dahl filled us in on the disastrous outcome of Verlaine's
affair with Rimbaud, and Brandes made a connection between "Spleen"
and Brokeback Mountain. But Verlaine's poetry speaks expressively on
many levels without particularities of context. The talk, if
anything, ill prepared both performers and audience for the splendid
first song of the Debussy set.

Five songs by Richard Strauss followed the Hindemith after
intermission. Most were written for piano and later orchestrated by
Strauss, the one exception being Meinem Kind, a lullaby for his
first child, which was originally sung with orchestra, later
transcribed for piano. The lullaby was especially meaningful for this
concert, since Laura Dahl was visibly pregnant with her first child.

Strauss does make a soprano sound good, and Brandes took full
advantage of the coloratura bits. There was a wonderful lick on
"Elysium" in Das Rosenband (the Elysium having been produced as a
result of some well-placed ribbons). Ich wollt ein Sträusslein
binden (I would have brought you flowers) started with tears, then
introduced a flower which could be picked to take to the beloved. The
flower pleaded for its life, and was left unpicked, and anyway the
sweetheart didn't show up. More tears. I thought of Goethe's and
Mozart's violet, so enamored of a pretty shepherdess that it died
happy when she stepped on it. The concert ended with
the lovely Morgen (Tomorrow) with its long orchestral introduction,
followed by the ringing "Habe Dank" (Thanks) of Zueignung
(Dedication).

And then, by golly, what do you suppose Christine Brandes sang for an
encore? Of course, the Mozart Veilchen!

(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculties of
UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University, and lecturer emerita and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)